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Dhananath (fondly known as Dhana) is currently the chief executive officer of Advocata, an economic policy think tank in Sri Lanka, where he is a founder member. Advocata Institute worked extensively on bringing down tariffs on menstrual hygiene products in Sri Lanka, reforms of State Owned Enterprises(SOE’s), Micro and Small Enterprises and avoiding Price controls.

Advocata was ranked as the best upcoming think tank in 2017 and 2018 at the “Global Go to Think Tank Index” by University of Pennsylvania. Advocata report on “SOE’S in Sri Lanka: Beyond “Profit and Losses” made the list of best policy study reports by a think tank across the world in 2019. In 2022 Advocata won the Asia Liberty Award and the prestigious Templeton Freedom Award.

Prior to founding Advocata, Dhananath worked as an Associate Research Director at Breakthrough Business Intelligence, a leading market research agency in Sri Lanka and as an Executive at MAS Holdings a leading apparel exporter in Sri Lanka/Asia

He read for his Bachelor’s degree in Bio Sciences and Bio Chemistry at the University of Colombo. He is an Eisenhower global fellow and a member of Asia Society. He has provided commentary on Sri Lanka’s economy in BBC, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera and many international media.

He was the winner of the “Asian Think Tank Shark Tank Competition - 2018” in Jakarta, and a finalist for the “Think Tank Shark Tank Global Competition” in New York in 2019.

Dhananath is also a curator and founding member of AK Lit Fest, a trilingual literary festival dedicated to showcasing local authors of Sri Lanka. He is also a member of Safety Advisory Council in South Asia for Tik Tok

In his social responsibilities, Dhananath works with ‘people in need’ by volunteering with CandleAid Lanka, a government approved humanitarian organisation. He was a part of a team training vision- and hearing-impaired students on swimming and safety, and the main coordinator for personality, career development, and English training for undergraduates.

Dhananath is an enthusiastic mountain climber and a trekker. He completed the Everest Base Camp in May 2018 and the Chardar Trek (one of the wildest treks based on a ranking by CNN), a frozen river at the Indian-Tibetan border in 2017.